Asherons Call: A Letter to the Readers

There are a lot of changes going on right now, many you can't see. We've been working hard behind the scenes to make WCoD THE AC site to visit.

First off, Lewt is leaving us for the Ac2 site. He's going to do wonderful things there, but its going to leave a hole here. I've really enjoyed having him around...his enthusiasm is catching. Lewt, we wish you the best and you know how to find us if you need help.

Also, Quendor has asked to join the staff and Empath has left us to spend more time on Third Party Paradise and prepare for AC2. I expect we'll see him on our AC2 site in the future.

This means we'll be adding new staff. A LOT of it.

Last month, for the first time since February CoD took a SUBSTANTIAL hit in visits. We lost 25%!!! I'd like to attribute it all to the NDA being lifted, unfortunately, AC2 Warcry picked up less than 10% of what we lost. And we're down 25% again this month. This is unprecedented for us.

There are a LOT of reasons - AC2, NWN, a bazillion other games, the age of AC....mostly, to be quite honest I think allegiance web sites have hurt us more than anything. A year ago I didn't have one. Now, I know of few that don't. Each one of them chips away at us.

With the lifting of the NDA, people finally learned what those of us who'd played had been saying all along - AC2 is NOT AC1+. And because of it, Turbine's supposition that AC has some years left in it now appears true. BUT, it will never be the game of its glory days - in its glory days there wasn't any competition.

And CoD can't ever be the HUGE site that it was before for all of the other games....BUT and this is a BIG BUT (no jokes) we CAN become the ONLY site to go to. To that end, we'll be making improvements, adding features and staying fresh.

To do that, we need to be new, fresh and exciting ALL of the time. (no jokes please) We are constantly improving your sections...but often we don't tell you, the readers. I was once told by my manager that I needed to write a review of myself of everything good and new I'd done in a year. Because if I didn't know, how could she? Well, if we don't tell our readers, how do they know?

So, you ask, what is WCoD doing to make things better?

- Ophelea - a) I'm on a hiring spree. I plan to hire a new ASM, Codemonkey, Second Artist, Asst Lore Editor, New Patch Tree Editor, Asst Guild Hall Editor, 2-5 new columnists and 3-5 "interpreters. b) The Codemonkey is going to help Optim build tables - for vendors for supplies, NPC's, jewelry, anything we don't already have. c) The asst lore editor is going to help Chain get his encyclopedia done. d) the asst guild editor will help Fern get at least the prelim interviews done. e) And the interpreters are going to follow Gendhils lead and start translating lore and stories into French, German and probably Japanese. I've also made arrangements for a Darktide interview with Turbine. And they've asked us to interview and profile their AC Live team. We're going to have more contests with Turbine as well "the gods of Turbine willing"

- Optim Shi - He's working on creating some new columns for the Weapons Table to manage variances. Cleaning up a Newsletter page so that we can do newsletters and will be doing the interviews.

Optim and I both will start supervising the Library. Suede has the armor database to contend with and after some review he needs to put his full attention there. So, until we find a better way to manage it, Optim and I will oversee various people taking care of sections of the library.

- Ibn - Ibn's done wonders with the mods. Ibn will be working on a Warcry policy for modding. Eventually, we will lose Araman Kain and Maddy so I'm sure he'll be hiring then. Somehow, I'd like to see our mods get involved with managing our calendar.

- Chain - Chain's been working on an encyclopedia...I'd like to get a new page to this ever 10 days. So, we're gonna find him help. Also, he'll get Loremasters moving again. I've had people ask where it went!

- Tapestry - Tapestry has had few entries for our Atlas as of yet but he's been working with Roewin to COMPLETELY redo our spells table. Rather than one sample of each spell (level 1) they will ALL be in there. This has been weeks of data entry.

- Seraquiel - Ser has taken the info from AC Monster and has been painstakinly one monster at a time updating every single one.

- Tjene - Tjene has made sure that tinkering is updated within 5 hours of patch each month - if you haven't yet looked, you should.

- Selenia - Selenia has been waiting on her Neverending Story for about 2 weeks now. It's been moved back another 2 weeks due to coding priorities for another site on the network. So...until then she's going take over the player fiction section AND we'll be adding a player biography section.

- Quendor - Quendor has asked to go to AC2...but until he does, he's been updating the links on each item in the trophies.

- Cunegonde - Cune started Where in Dereth again last week using the newly made section. Once he gets moved in we'll see a fresh Screenshot of the Day every day and Where in Dereth each week.

- Fernmyst - Fern did a great job with her first interview. I'd like to see the allegiance of EVERY member of the staff in the Guild Hall. And I'm going to find her help. I want to see one up there every week.

- Suede Mage - Suede picked up the Library and Armor but as mentioned beore Armor really needs attention. Help him find what's missing.

- Roewin - Roewin has re-energized the Quest Team. El Harco recently resigned and he found a replacement in Unarmed nearly immediately. I know he has other applications pending. I can't wait to see what comes out of this team!

Now - we have three new people....

- Sao Le-Fut - Sao took over weapons and on his first day decided we needed the new columns with variance. Expect a lengthy list of missing items in the news.

- Taebow - recommended to us by Tjene, Taebow is going to be our General Editor. He's already set to work on our REALLY REALLY outdated FAQ. He'll be updating the character creation essays in the library. And then he'll be annoying all of the other editors by combing through each piece of data and making sure its linked throughout. He's going to make our compedium SHINE.

- Talyne - FINALLY, were going to have a Roleplaying component to this site. Talyne will begin by looking for a core group to have weekly "events" in our Tavern. Once those begin to grow, coupled with Selenia's biographies, we'll expand our team and start in-game "events". This is a LONG-term ENORMOUS commitment by Talyne. We're very excited about this.

So, anytime you think nothing changes...think again. Ask my editors/mods. I never let them sleep.